In recent years, cooking assistance devices for performing a standard operation instead of humans having been developed for higher efficiency and labor saving and are being used particularly in restaurant industry and the like. Many of these devices include a mixing blade, mix ingredients in a fixed large-size pan by actively rotating the mixing blade and heat all the ingredients.
However, for example, at the time of stir-frying, ingredients burn if being left stationary, wherefore it is necessary to perform a so-called basic operation of stir-frying, which is normally done by a person at the time of cooking by mixing ingredients using a cooking paddle while shaking a pan upward and downward. Thus, there is a problem that the above cooking devices cannot perform a cooking operation depending on the type of cooking.
In order to solve this problem, some cooking devices include an actively rotatable cooking container and a similarly actively rotatable spiral mixing element or a mixing paddle structured to be able to passively change an angle in conformity with the movement of ingredients. This proposes technology for actively mixing all the ingredients to evenly mix the ingredients while preventing the ingredients from being burnt in the case of being stir-fried (for example, see Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. H06-261831).
However, these cooking assistance devices and mixing devices are designed to evenly mix all the ingredients by causing the mixing blade or mixing element or the entire cooking container to repeatedly perform predetermined operations (rotation, shaking). Thus, there is a likelihood of unevenly heating the ingredients according a change in the state of the ingredients being mixed.